


The Fairy Knight

by picklepeep



Series: The Fairy Knight [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Amateur cobbling, Dark oceans, Deep forests, Dendrological linguistics, Fairies, Fantasy, Folkloric, Gen, Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development, Original work - Freeform, Penguins, Portrayal of hunting (sort of), Whimsical, Winter(s), fey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:41:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26330545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/picklepeep/pseuds/picklepeep
Summary: A fairy is born out of the ice, which is a problem for everyone. It gets a name, and gets in trouble.
Series: The Fairy Knight [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913299





	The Fairy Knight

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to [amdg2846](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amdg2846/) for reading and providing feedback!

Some time ago - maybe a hundred years, or maybe yesterday - in a place of great darkness and frigid air, a part of the ice in the great fjords of the great sea became a person. This was a bit of a shock, because it had never been a person before and for a while it wasn’t sure what to do. It tried being ice again, but that was impossible, and also very cold. So it looked for other options. It saw some seals, and so decided to try being a seal. But none of the other seals were very keen on this, and excluded it from all their seal activities. It tried next to be a penguin, and while the penguins humored it for a while, it could tell they were teasing it behind its back. So in the end it resigned itself to being a person after all, this seeming like a very complicated thing to be (with no readily available examples) but still the best option under the circumstances. 

It slowly learned to enjoy all the things a person can do, like running about, and singing to itself, and eating a raw seal. These were all very novel, and the person learned many things about itself. Firstly, that it wished that there was something that it could put on its feet so that the ground didn’t feel quite so hard when it was running about. The dead seal was surprisingly helpful in this regard, and the next thing the person learned was how to make shoes. This is, I’ll grant you, uncommon as a first and second thing to learn, but then most people have a grace period before they need to figure out the business of locomotion. The third thing the person learned is that it could only think of one song, and that raw seals only taste one way. This may seem like two things, but what the person had actually discovered was being bored, and these two things were merely a manifestation of that greater realization.

It’s difficult to blame it, really. The fjords are very breathtaking if you don’t happen to have been there for as long as you’ve existed and then some, but are quite ordinary if you happen to be made of ice. There were actually other people who lived on the fjords (though our hero didn’t know this) in little fishing villages. Even they were really very bored the vast majority of the time. All of their sons dreamed of leaving and being famous traders (there being a famous trader in their legends called Cirrim the Rich) and all of their daughters dreamed of leaving and being famous pirates (there being a famous pirate in their legends called Burra the Raider). Being a very enterprising and ambitious folk, they grew up to achieve this more often than not, and flooded the seas with traders and pirates of the very best sorts, to the point that it was a wonder that there was anyone left to be a fisherman and have sons and daughters to dream of being traders and pirates. The upshot of all this is that leaving the fjords to go somewhere else is perfectly natural and so it’s no surprise that our ice-born person decided to do the same, and wandered off into the deep conifer forests that sat inland and seemed to go on for miles and miles, that being the natural direction when you don’t have a boat and can’t even consider going to sea.

The forests were not, as a rule, traversed by the people of the fishing villages, except when they went in with axes to cut trees for their boats, and even then only to the outer fringes. In days gone by another people, who lived in the valleys on the other side of the forest, had gone much deeper, they had run their pigs there and gone foraging for mushrooms. But those days were a long time ago, and now they kept away as well. The forests were very dark, and dangerous, and full of strange things. This didn’t matter very much to the person, because it was also very strange. It wandered around for a while, in no particular direction, with no particular goal in mind. The trees of the forest, counter to their bad reputation, were actually quite friendly (except when they were being cut down to be made into boats, though some eventually found being a boat to their liking) and welcomed the person with soft rustlings of their branches. It marveled at their height and wonderful decorations, green pins and blue berries and spiky brown cones. A particularly gregarious young pine reached out its branch in welcome, and the person reached out to touch it. But when it touched the branch, the beautiful green pins and blue berries and spiky brown cones all froze at the cold touch of its skin and fell to the floor. Both the person and the tree drew back, surprised and not at all pleased by what had happened. An elderly aspen, who was one of the few broadleaf trees in the forest, and knew very well the perils of the cold, tutted under its breath and said that this was to be expected, for the person was a little winter and would bring nothing but trouble to any tree it had dealings with.

In the language that the trees spoke, which is very similar to the language of fairies, “little winter” is said as _Wayez_ , with _Way_ for winter and _ez_ for the diminutive. Trees, which tend to not be very philosophical, draw their language principally from their own direct experiences. The word _ez_ was also used for a seed. You may object at this point that you have never heard a tree speak. This is a reasonable complaint, for trees very rarely speak these days, for fear that humans would forever be asking them things they preferred to keep private, such as what sunlight tastes like. But you must understand that these trees were almost only ever with their own kind, and thus at liberty to speak as much as they pleased, and also rather lonely for lack of any new company, and so much more disposed to speak than you might expect in the present day. At this you might reasonably offer another objection. That it seems rather cruel, given that trees have their own language, to cut them down and turn them into things and burn them. This is also a very reasonable complaint, and it’s true that trees don’t particularly like being cut down, but ultimately they don’t mind all that much so long as they’re not torn up at the roots. They sometimes grow back eventually anyway, and either way a part of them gets to experience being a table or whatever, which is actually quite appealing when you spend every day standing in the exact same place. Even being burnt, which I think most of us would agree seems like possibly the worst thing you could hope to experience, isn’t so bad for a tree. I’m not sure as to the particulars of why this is, except that it has something to do with what sunlight tastes like, and since no tree has ever explained that to me, I can’t provide you with any more details.

The person had never been called anything before, but now it was called Wayez, for lack of anything better. It felt good, like a space inside itself that it didn’t know existed had been filled in with something colorful and pleasant. A name is a very useful thing to have, after all, especially if someone is writing a story about you. This particular nuance was lost on Wayez, of course, but it was still pleased enough to burst into joyful laughter, the awkwardness of mauling a tree’s limb with frost quickly forgotten. This seemed rather cruel to the trees, and confirmed for them what the aspen had said about the danger of the little winter. On the whole they became rather unfriendly and silent to Wayez in the hopes that it would go away and leave them alone.

It didn’t. It thanked the aspen for its gift of a name by tapping away at its leaves one at a time until they had all fallen, sooner than the aspen would have liked. It spent the next few days frolicking here and there, having its petty fun, relishing in the way that the trees seemed to pull back at its approach. It seemed, for a while, like the trees would have to put up with Wayez forever and have a little bit of winter bothering them the whole year round and they wept and moaned at the thought. Now it is worth reminding you, at this point, that these woods are strange and dark and dangerous. Certainly the trees were odd in their way, and definitely very shady. But the danger was from other things, deeper things, one of which was summoned by all this loud griping.

It was a rider who found Wayez, a tall, terrible fairy, who rode a tall, very lovely elk. He was clad in dark armor, and sheltered from the wind by a cloak of deep grey. On his brow was a diadem, in which was set a single orange stone, and on his back was a long and wicked bow. His look was fearsome and the animals of the forest, save for his elk of course, fled at his passing (they were no great fans of Wayez either, but had fewer specific complaints). He was a hunter, and his hearing was unparalleled. He had heard the trees from miles away and come to investigate. What he found was rather surprising to him, because he had not seen anyone quite like Wayez before.

Wayez was a lithe little creature, naked save for rough sealskin shoes. It struck him as being a woman or girl or something like this, though Wayez understood very little of this aspect of how beings sometimes divide themselves up at this time, and had even less interest in it. Its skin was pale blue, with white lines like cracks in ice. Its features were sharp and a little cruel, and its eyes, which were almost black all the way through, fixed intently on whatever it was looking at. On top of its head was a filthy mop of tangled white hair. When Wayez moved too quickly, it seemed as though a cascade of snowflakes would escape from its hair and scatter all over the ground. It was, on the whole, very filthy and smelled terrible. When it saw him it laughed, and its voice crackled like frost.

He drew his bow and pointed an arrow at the creature.

“You are meddling with the queen’s woods, and upsetting the trees, and I will probably kill you,” he said.

Wayez cocked its head to the side, like a confused dog, because it had very little comprehension of death and was not particularly intimidated by any of this.

The hunter sighed.

“You are a sort of fairy, yes? Of whose family are you? What court do you come from?”

Again, Wayez looked confused. The hunter lowered the bow.

“I feel that I would embarrass myself by killing such a foolish creature. There is no honor for me in such a thing, even if you are making a great nuisance of yourself. Come with me, to the court of the queen. She will decide what is to be done with you. Do not think to run. There are other hunters less discriminating than I.”

He shifted on his elk and beckoned Wayez to join him on its back. Wayez hesitated for a moment, but lacked a reason to refuse. One thing was much the same as another for a creature only a few weeks old. And so it climbed on. As the elk began to trot on through the forest, Wayez gripped the hunter’s cloak tightly, but the cloak didn’t freeze.


End file.
